The original idea, as I understand it, was that it would be made of the same stainless alloy that SpaceX was developing for Starship. This steel was too hard to form using stamping, as the tools used would wear down much faster. So, they had to limit themselves to bending the sheet metal with a press brake, which really can’t do compound curves, hence the need for straight lines. Whether any of this was ever the real reason I have no idea, but one tidbit is that for Starship, they were using 304L (same mixture as some of my pans) and may never have switched to their own alloy. So, the design may at one point have been necessary for practical considerations, but that may have been mooted without bothering to change the design.
Just another example of how Americans will use anything but metric (we do use metric sometimes, I know, it’s just a meme). We could easily measure it in Wh/km, but then we would also have to change how we measure gasoline cars if we want people to make direct comparisons. But, since we sell gas by the gallon, we would also have to change how gas is sold. When the EPA first came up with mpge I thought it was stupid (we don’t buy electricity by the gallon!), but I’ve come around to the convenience of being able to easily compare the two types of fuel. The EPA assumes 1 gallon of gas to contain 33.7 kWh of energy.
Maybe we should get everyone to switch to Joules for measuring, buying, and selling gasoline and electricity?
I did the math once for my own commute, on my e-bike and with my electric car, and found that while the electric car uses only 20% of the energy that an average gas-powered car would, the bike uses just 1%. My bike, on my route (both directions averaged together) got 2,200 mpge.
The 1999 movie with Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, and Michael Gambon? I just watched it again a couple nights ago! Love it. Love the atmosphere of the photo, matches what we’ve had here the past few days; foggy and chilly. Very appropriate for the time of year.
Hell yeah we slept in the deployment area. We were deploying to Afghanistan by air, and after showing up on base with the hand-carry gear that would go on the plane with us (other gear was a combination of cargo flight and stuff already there) we jumped on the passenger buses to take us to the nearby air base we would fly out of. It was still early when we got there, both early in the morning and early for the flight. You always build in plenty of extra time; “hurry up and wait” is the mantra. So we spent a few hours before the plane even showed up just waiting in the passenger terminal, which was just a big hangar with a snack bar on one end and unlimited coffee. Most of us slept for a bit. And before you ask where, the answer is always “on the floor”.
Without additional details on where those troops are (US or already on board ships in the Mediterranean?), it could mean a few things, but speaking from my own experience it would involve having all required equipment packed up and staged on a military base, personnel would have a bag packed and easily accessible, and any scheduled training exercises would likely be cancelled, especially if they were multi-day exercises. Normal daily routine would be the same. Any leave would be cancelled. 24 hours was how long we had to report to an assembly area for deployment, not necessarily actually leave the country, much less arrive at the destination.
Personal experience: having guaranteed health care not tied to my employment is a huge burden off my shoulders. I am so grateful that my wife and I are taken care of, and I vote for people who try to make it happen for everyone. But let’s face reality, there are huge entrenched interests that oppose any kind of universal plan, so the ACA with all its flaws is probably the best we will get for quite some time. Even where I live, in California, with the legislature and all statewide elected offices under single-party control for years now, it hasn’t happened. The ACA was a deal with the devil to get more people insured, yeah, but insurance is no guarantee of health care. I’m glad I have the latter.
My first thought exactly.